TOMONOURA, Japan — The black and white frog looked ready to jump. Save a tea room with a few mugs and a kettle, the house was empty and quiet. The roof creaked at random and I watched bugs leap from flower to flower in the garden. Lying on the soft woven floor, I glanced again at the watercolor of the almost-jumping frog.
A distillery once operated out of this restored medieval home. They brewed a liquor infused with local flora and herbs. Next door, an elderly woman offered samples from her collection. We drifted through the narrow streets and along the water, past wood-paneled houses and their gardens and flowerbeds.
Tarps covered fishing boats in the deserted harbor and poles sat unattended along the stone walkway. Someone said the town is not open on Wednesdays. We searched for a Shinto shrine that played host to eighteenth-century Korean envoys. It was not hard to find. Part of Tomonoura’s charm is that you can make your way—leisurely, even—across the entire town in under half an hour.
We left our shoes at the door and ducked into the shrine. Its back wall offered a stunning view of the Inland Sea and its plush green islands. Artifacts and exhibits lined the other walls. Across the street, we bought ferry tickets at the one-room port and waited for the boat to ride over to the island we’d seen from the window.
An antique wooden ship, replete with portraits and maps inside, sailed over aquamarine waters into an even smaller harbor. This one had no ticket station or attendant. If you made your way here you’d earned a ride back. Disembarking, we walked along a small trail and reached a beach that faced yet another small, uninhabited island and the open sea.
I laid on the warm grass and promptly fell asleep. Bugs crawled on my legs and it was less charming than watching them in a garden from a distance. People splashed in the water and we wondered about the abandoned buildings that dotted the grassy knoll that doubled as the beach. I thought about the composition of the film photos I was taking and asked if anyone thought they’d be able to swim back to shore.
Back in Tomonoura, we had misread the bus schedule and found ourselves with an extra hour to spare. A small wooden restaurant along the main two-lane thoroughfare looked inviting and we sat inside. There were eight seats and we were seven. We ate lunch in thirds; first, a bowl with fish, rice, fish eggs, and greens. We took sesame seeds, grinded them into a fine powder, and mixed them with soy sauce over the bowl.
After the first third, we added a runny egg. When only the final third remained, we poured hot soup and added a fish-shaped cracker. “Five minutes,” someone said as we paid the shopkeeper and cook, who walked us through the process. We stood on the promenade and looked at the island from before as Bus 5 to Fukuyama pulled in.
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